Just one month after celebrating their 10-year wedding anniversary, Kate Middleton and Prince William returned to St. Andrews, their college and the place they met and fell in love. While on
campus, the couple listened to students in their majors, geography and art history, speak about how they coped during the coronavirus pandemic. Kate wore a Holland Cooper blazer, Veja sneakers, an Erdem striped sweater, and skinny jeans.
Kate and William met in 2001 when they were enrolled there. The then-future Duchess of Cambridge went to great lengths to put herself in William’s path. “Kate was very strategic,” The Crownhistorian Robert Lacey told ELLE.com in November. “She gave up her place at one of Britain’s premier universities, Edinburgh, and opted for another one [St. Andrews] that probably didn’t have the same academic standard. She had already been to Edinburgh to get her flat accommodations sorted out but switched universities and switched her courses to history of art because that was William’s. She delayed her own education by a year and even takes the chance she won’t get into St. Andrews.”
Kate ultimately won over William in 2002 after walking in a see-through dress at a fashion show at the university. “She’s there and about to walk down the runway on the fashion show, and she strips off an extra layer of clothing,” Lacey recalled. “Here is a very strategic lady who knows what she wants and has got it.”
That said, Kate did wait nine years for William to propose, and they were on-and-off at points. “Kate eventually accepted the idea that she would have to do a long apprenticeship,” Lacey recalled. “William didn’t want to marry until he was 30. She waited nine years, but, in the end, she got him at 28, so there’s another strategic accomplishment on her part—and she is proving to be an ideal heir to the throne.”